Read Online The One Worth Waiting For by Alicia Scott - Free Book Online

of lace. She walked through an archway into another room, her skirt swirling around her, and he followed her with the hunger still burning in his gaze.
    The dining room was dominated by a large oval table, and she took refuge behind it.
    “It’s not much,” she said quietly. The table was old, and once it had probably been beautiful, as well. But her ancestors hadn’t been good caretakers, or perhaps back then they’d had enough money not to care. At any rate, the formerly rich cherry wood was now warped with water damage and the table was wobbly from years of neglect. Nicks and scrapes, filled in from her futile attempts at refinishing the piece, rimmed the outside edge.
    It seemed to her that Garret’s sharp eyes saw every flaw, and she kept her shoulders rigidly straight. She’d fought so hard to save the house that simple possession had seemed enough. Now, for the first time, she was looking at her rooms through a stranger’s eyes and seeing all the blemishes on her prize—the old furniture she couldn’t afford to reupholster, the rug she didn’t have enough money to replace. She’d wanted to repaint the rooms last year, but the roof began leaking in the spring, taking up all her money instead.
    Garret came to the marked-up buffet, and a traitorous blush crept unwanted up her cheeks. Behind the protective glass rested her one true indulgence: her dolls.
    She flitted over, more nervous than she ever wanted to be, and opened the glass doors as if it didn’t mean much to her at all.
    “I started collecting them ten years ago,” she said, her voice only slightly breathless. He stood right beside her now, and she could smell the warm masculine scent of sweat and soap.
    “When your mother died,” he filled in softly.
    Her hands stilled for a moment, then she willed them back into motion. She forgot sometimes how smart Garret was, how easily he could fill in the blanks. “Yes.”
    She drew out the first of the ten dolls, a beautiful, porcelain girl with long brown hair falling in silky ringlets. She had wide blue eyes, blushing cheeks and a feathery hat. An exquisite creation, she was draped in a lovely dress of roseflowered cotton, gathered with lace and bows. Suzanne lifted the doll up, feeling the full porcelain body rest like a baby’s weight in her hand. As she raised the doll, the delicate eyelashes fluttered up, her jointed arms coming down.
    “She’s fully jointed porcelain,” Suzanne tried to explain briskly. “She has pierced ears, detailed clothing down to the shoes and twenty-four-carat gold painted around her wrist.”
    All careful considerations when contemplating buying a doll. And none of them explained why she’d actually bought the first doll ten years ago. Maybe because she didn’t like to recall the tightness that hit her chest when she’d seen the beautiful little girl staring back at her with china blue eyes. She didn’t like to think of the pang of loneliness that struck so suddenly and so sharply that tears had sprung into her eyes as she stood in front of the store.
    The dolls were everything beautiful and innocent and cosseted. Everything that as a child she’d never been, and as an adult would never be. And sometimes, in moments of weakness, she could picture herself handing the dolls to a phantom daughter and whispering with her about the beauty of their shared treasures.
    Now, she fussed with the doll’s hat, her hands trembling, while she tried to keep her emotions under control. “They’re good investments,” she said evenly. She could feel Garret’s eyes boring into her face and didn’t dare look up.
    “They’re pretty,” he said roughly. She nodded, but he felt the nervousness rolling off her in waves. Her face was pale, her hands shaky as she fidgeted with the fragile doll. And suddenly, he could see her in the rain, dressed in the ragged jeans and worn T-shirt she’d always worn back then, her hair long and lank around her thin face. He’d never completely